Poland the Cost of "Shaming the State"

By James Kelly

Grzegorz Piotrowski, the cashiered secret-police captain who was in turn arrogant and stony-faced during the six-week trial, finally broke down and wept last week. Moments before, Judge Artur Kujawa had sentenced Piotrowski to 25 years in prison for the brutal murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko. As Kujawa dryly explained his conduct of the trial, Piotrowski dropped his head to the wooden railing of the dock and wept.

He did so not out of remorse but relief, for he could have fared much worse: the state prosecutor had requested the death penalty. Also sentenced to long terms for aiding Piotrowski in the abduction and killing of Popieluszko last October were two subordinates in the security forces, Leszek Pekala and Waldemar Chmielewski. Pekala, who drove the kidnap car, received 15 years, and Chmielewski, whose stuttering, tear-filled testimony gave the trial some of its most dramatic moments, got 14 years. Adam Pietruszka, the former colonel who flatly denied Piotrowski's accusations that he had encouraged the killing, received a 25-year jail term.

As Kujawa, sitting beneath a heraldic eagle of Poland, sentenced Pietruszka, the defendant stared impassively. "They have brought shame on the state, the citizens and the system," declared Kujawa solemnly. "They have slandered the good name of Poland." In announcing the sentences, Kujawa drew a distinction between Pietruszka and Piotrowski, whom he described as the decision makers, and their subordinates. Kujawa explained that he chose not to order Piotrowski hanged because Polish law states that punishment should seek to educate and frighten the criminal, not simply avenge the crime. Indeed, lawyers representing Popieluszko's family and his driver, Waldemar Chrostowski, at the trial had mentioned the priest's personal opposition to capital punishment. On the day the verdicts were announced, Popieluszko's relatives were not even in court; they had said earlier that they were interested not in the penalties but only in seeing justice done.

The murder of Popieluszko, a popular and fervent supporter of the banned Solidarity labor union, and the subsequent arrest of the four Polish security officers, had presented the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski with its most formidable challenge since martial law was imposed in 1981. Jaruzelski's decision to prosecute the men publicly offered fellow Poles an unprecedented glimpse into the workings of the country's secret police and defused, at least temporarily, the explosive anger over Popieluszko's death. There is speculation that the murder was engineered by government hard-liners to embarrass Jaruzelski and his Interior Minister, General Czeslaw Kiszczak. But the carefully controlled trial left many unanswered questions and the pervasive feeling that the authorities may have protected high-ranking officials from being implicated in the killing. Some Poles believed that - Piotrowski deserved the death penalty, and there was widespread skepticism that the four men would be made to serve out their sentences.

The day of sentencing was like any other day in the courtyard outside St. Stanislaw Kostka Church in Warsaw, where Popieluszko is buried. Some 100 people filed silently past the priest's grave, some leaving flowers or lighting votive candles. The procession continued into the cold winter evening. "To me, the sentences are not important," said Monika Bobrowska, a high school student tending the flickering banks of candles. "Whatever the sentences are, I don't think they will serve them."

One important result of the proceedings in the Torun courthouse could be a decline in the already tense relationship between the government and the Roman Catholic Church. The government's presentation of its case angered many Polish Catholics: State Prosecutor Leszek Pietrasinski, for example, painted Popieluszko as an extremist "filled with hatred for socialist Poland." And Kujawa himself read allegations of the dead priest's political activities into the record. The murder of Popieluszko and its aftermath have led many of the country's 22,000 clergymen to question the leadership of Jozef Cardinal Glemp. In attempting to reach an accommodation with the Communist authorities, his critics charge, Glemp has reduced the church's activist role in Poland. "We must be ready for an ideological battle," said Father Antoni Lewek during a sermon at St. Stanislaw Kostka Church shortly after the verdicts were announced. "Not a battle with the use of sticks, but with words and truth."

After the testimony of the four accused, the government suddenly seemed intent on limiting the scope of the inquiry. Kujawa, who presided over the five-man panel of judges, did not allow attorneys representing Popieluszko's family and driver to call witnesses who might elucidate the often contradictory testimony of government officials. He displayed a friendly, almost fatherly attitude toward Piotrowski during his testimony and allowed him to turn his defense into a lengthy attack against activist priests and the church in general. Pietruszka testified that his superior, General Zenon Platek, an Interior Ministry official responsible for monitoring church activities, had told him to lie to investigators about the changing of license plates on Piotrowski's car. When Platek took the stand, he stumbled through the prosecutor's perfunctory questioning. He was never vigorously pressed ( about Pietruszka's charges.

Though the trial was broadcast live every day on closed-circuit television to high-ranking government officials, the Polish people viewed only condensed versions every night. As the trial progressed, the testimony became more heavily edited. The summation of Attorney Edward Wende, an auxiliary prosecutor who had once served as the slain priest's lawyer, was edited so badly that church officials fired off a protest to television and radio authorities. Last week Wende's entire one-hour speech was read at many church services.

The trial of the murderers of one of Poland's most celebrated priests may well deter future secret-police abuses. In a country that measures freedom by inches and progress by decades, the jailing of Father Jerzy Popieluszko's killers may emerge as a historic event of the first magnitude.

With reporting by John Moody/Warsaw